Wednesday, September 12, 2007 Carvajal: Culture of impunity By Orlando P. Carvajal Break Point
THERE is hardly any denying that in this country the rich and powerful can and do get away with murder, both literally and allegorically. With all due respect to those who truly consider themselves as exceptions, the wielders of power violate just about every and any law in the country with impunity. Nobody can prove anything. Wealth and power simply bribe, threaten or otherwise kill witnesses into silence, judges into rendering a favorable decision and the police into planting evidence.
Hence, the operative perception is there are two brands of justice, one for the poor and powerless and another for the rich and powerful. Our jails are full of petty thieves, like snatchers and burglars. But the big crooks in government are enjoying the time of their life, immune from persecution because they did not steal from anybody powerful. They stole from the government, from the people’s money and the people are mainly poor and powerless.
So, will former President Joseph Estrada get justice? Because he remains rich and powerful, even if indeed he plundered (and he most probably did as they all do not excepting the incumbent most probably) he should get away with it. The rich and powerful are closely knit, even if they show opposition in public, and will protect their own kind. Following this logic, they should all rally to get a verdict of non-guilty.
They cannot want a guilty verdict for this would end the culture of impunity which I am very sure they have all the intention in the world of continuing. If a most powerful man, like former President Estrada, is convicted of plunder then who among the lesser gods in the Philippine’s Mt. Olympus can now escape conviction? The incumbent President knows what version of plunder of her own she is doing so she cannot possibly want a precedent-setting verdict of guilty on Estrada.
But the administration’s problem is that the former President’s case will not only test our justice system, it will also, and more importantly so, test the legitimacy of PGMA’s first term as president. If former President Estrada is acquitted, then there was no basis in fact for his ouster by way of people power. If acquitted then it would mean that the people power that ousted him came from the instigation of those who eventually took over power. And if there was no basis for his ouster by the people, what does that make of the first term of PGMA?
Those are the horns of the dilemma the administration is now caught in. They are damned if they do and damned if they don’t, so to speak. In any way they’re damned, we will most surely never know if it was based on judicial evidence or political convenience. Justice is not the issue. Power is.
